SWTOR Housing

Hologram NPC to start housing mission

After the first planet (zone) the new characters goes to the faction fleet station (major faction city) where they can find a hologram giving them a mission to buy a house, any house, but for new players the choices is limited, not complaining here because any house is better than none, and the game allow you to buy many houses later, you just need money.

You buy a house from these screens, each represent a planet

When clicking on a screen this UI shows, 2.5 million credits for a house in Yavin 4

The house i bought is an apartment in Coruscant, the whole planet is a city, the house costs just 7 credits! click on thumbnails to see the process for decorating the house.

New house, empty

clicking edit mode shows the hooks

close up to a hook

right-click on a hook, shows what you can put there

Placing an item

the room after putting many items

Legacy storage and mail box

expansion costs 10k credits

another room

big window to never ending traffic

The whole decorating system depend on hooks, which means you can’t do crazy stuff with it, compare that to Everquest 2 housing where you can’t put anything any where and put it in any size you want, players came up with creative ideas to use decorations in EQ2, SWTOR does not allow that … but … SWTOR housing is a million time better than no housing.

There is also guild housing, which gives guild member some useful perks and buffs.

Some decorations offer functions, like bank storage which is a character bank, there is Legacy storage which is account bank, and guild bank.

There are terminals to change your look and race, a mod table to improve your gear, cartel market terminal (auction house), mail box, vendor NPCs.

With these decorations you can have useful functions, and yet it does not mean players will stay there all the time, the house is a nice place to stay in when you wait for other stuff, like joining a group in a group finder to do flashpoints (dungeon-like instances).

I think SWTOR housing is good, the game offer you many housing items even before you get a chance to have a house, so when you start your house you have a large list of items ready to use in the house.

Blizzard: where is my house?

Massively OP wrote a daily grind about housing, which MMO provide the most disappointing housing system, a good question and a subject i care about, because all games i play have no housing and i wish some of them have.

Some comments said Garrisons in Warlords of Draenor is one of them, and i disagree, Garrison should never be called housing, it never was and it never will, garrison should only called Garrison, a system Blizzard designed for WoD expansion.

Garrison is not housing because:

• It is not optional in the time of Warlords of Draenor, you can skip it now with character boost, but if you are leveling a character you probably should have a garrison because a lot of the quests need it.
• There is no customizing options, Alliance gets a human designed garrison, the Horde gets goblin/orcish designed garrison, and i don’t think building choice is customization.
• In Legion, Garrison is irrelevant, you don’t need it, and if you are leveling you can’t get a garrison because you need to reach level 90 before starting with WoD.
• Garrison is a military base, you don’t go there to arrange the furniture, you are a commander there who lead an army to invade a new world, this is not a house.

Housing in other MMOs does not work like garrison, so i don’t like it when WoW players or developers say we don’t want housing because garrison did not work … again: garrison is not housing.

WoW History with housing

The idea of housing in WoW is as old as WoW itself, Wowpedia documented this in a page, check Blizzard quotes section, the oldest quote goes back to july 2004, months before WoW release, Blizzard wanted to offer housing but i think they could not, time was probably not enough before release to offer housing, and i guess it was not their top priority every time they develop a new expansion.

Wow players asked for housing since 2004 to this day, check this video, viewer voted for features the want to see, and in this list of top 10, housing comes first:

Clearly there is a demand for housing in WoW, and it is one of these features that people won’t ever stop asking for.

How it could work in WoW

Blizzard won’t go crazy like WildStar or offer the freedom of Landmark, and that is fine, housing in wow will be an instance in many zones, they could let players choose which zone to put their build their house on, and WoW have so many zones, if you love desert like me you could choose Uldum and the zone will offer many spots to build your house, but you should be exalted with Ramkahen faction.

Your house is there for you only, no one will see it, it is an instance just like the garrison, you could invite people into a group to show off your house, they could show off their houses.

each profession could offer housing items, and Blizzard could add a new profession just for housing items, woodworking is an old idea, so this profession will work for housing and it could offer new toys and mounts.

The house should be cosmetic, unlike the garrison which offered too much for the player, the house should encourage the player to go out in the world to collect stuff for it, go to dungeons and raids, explore the world and find items to collect.

All of that is just an idea i wish to see, of course the last word is for Blizzard … come on Blizzard, what takes you so long?